Monte-Carlo Ballet presents J C Maillot’s Ma Bayadère

This Christmas, Monte-Carlo Ballet presents Ma Bayadère, Choreographer-Director J C Maillot’s reinterpretation of Marius Petipa’s La Bayadère, one of the great ballets of the classical repertoire.

Ever an enthusiast for narrative ballet, Maillot retains the score of Ludwig Minkus, but whereas Petipa placed his 1877 ballet in an oriental setting, repeated by Rudolf Nureyev in his 1992 version, Maillot has placed his new creation in a dance company, where human relations can descend to their most visceral and irrational.

La Bayadère (the Temple Dancer) premiered at the Imperial Mariinsky Theatre in St Petersburg on February 4, 1877. At the time, Marius Petipa was Premier Maître de Ballet of the Imperial Theatres, and he selected for the score Ludwig Minkus, who frequently collaborated with him and who also wrote the scores for Don Quixote and Paquita. The original version of the story – to a libretto by Marius Petipa and Sergei Khudekov – dealt with the love triangle between Nikita, Solor and Gamzatti, hindered by the High Brahmin, who was also in love with Nikita.

Ma Bayadère by Jean-Christophe Maillot for Les Ballets de Monte-Carlo - photo © Alice Blangero

Having already delivered his own versions of Romeo and Juliet, Cinderella, Swan Lake and Coppélia, Maillot was asked in a recent interview why he had chosen to rework La Bayadère. His reply was interesting. “La Bayadère has always fascinated me,” he said, “because it tells the story of a group of sacred dancers in their workplace, which happens to be a temple. There is an obvious parallel in my eyes between this situation and what a ballet company experiences within a theatre. Reading between the lines of the plot of this piece, I find many elements that reflect the daily life of choreographic artists.”

Asked to explain further, he made the point that Bayadères are sacred dancers, having dedicated their lives to dance, and as all the dancers in his company have done the same and made sacrifices in their lives with similar choices, he sees parallels between them. There is also the young Temple Dancer, Nikiya, whose arrival on the scene upsets the established order, throwing the plans of others into disarray, shattering their dreams so that she can succeed. “These are emotional dynamics that I’ve seen here and there throughout my career as a dancer and then as a choreographer,” he says.

Maillot says that his ballet will not be set in India, because the India of the original ballet is a country seen through the eyes of 19th century Europeans, and therefore lacking any historical or cultural substance. He does concede though that he does love the wealth of the sets, costumes and props, but believes that these must be backed up by the choreography.

Ma Bayadère will certainly be one of his most personal works.

Garrett Keast, an American conductor based in Berlin, has appeared with some of Europe’s major orchestras and opera companies, and enjoyed a ten-year collaboration with John Neumeier’s Hamburg Ballet. He leads the Monte-Carlo Philharmonic Orchestra in eight performances of J C Maillot’s Ma Bayadère between December 27, 2025, and January 4, 2026, at the Salle des Princes, Grimaldi Forum, Monaco. Further information can be found on the Monte-Carlo Ballet website.

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